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The scandal has been dogging the prime minister for more than a year

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has denied he played any role in the alleged cover-up of a land sale at the centre of a growing scandal.

The controversy relates to the sale of government land at below market price to a controversial nationalist group.

The group is alleged to have used its links to Mr Abe’s wife to secure the discount. References to the Abes were later removed from documents.

The scandal and cronyism accusations have led to calls for Mr Abe to resign.

Finance ministry officials last week admitted to removing references to Mr Abe, his wife and Finance Minister Taro Aso in some documents relating to the sale.

But speaking in parliament on Monday, the embattled prime minister told lawmakers: “I did not direct that the documents be altered.”

“In fact, I didn’t even know that they existed at all, so how could I have done that?”

What is Mr Abe accused of?

At the heart of the scandal is Moritomo Gakuen, a controversial organisation known for its ultra-conservative, nationalistic principles. Its founder was a known supporter of Mr Abe.

The organisation wanted to set up a school in Osaka, and bought a plot of land from the transport ministry in 2016. The prime minister’s wife, Akie Abe, was listed as the school’s honorary principal.

It later emerged that Moritomo Gakuen had paid about a sixth of the market price.

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Calls for Mr Abe to resign have been mounting

Allegations emerged that Mrs Abe had lobbied the government, on behalf of the school, to give a discount.

All parties denied this, and Mr Abe offered to resign if any proof emerged of a connection between him and the deal.

Mrs Abe resigned as honorary principal.

The school principal and his wife were arrested last July on suspicion of fraudulently receiving subsidies and remain in jail.

Why did the scandal resurface?

Earlier this month, it emerged that references to Mr Abe, his wife and Mr Aso had been removed from documents relating to the sale before they were made public.

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Akie Abe, who has resigned as honorary principal, denies any wrongdoing

The documents indicated Mrs Abe had said the deal should go ahead. This has sparked allegations of a high-level cover-up.

Mr Aso has blamed junior staffers for changing the documents, and promised to find out what happened.

He has said the responsibility rests with Nobuhisa Sagawa, who had headed up the department which oversaw the land deal. He has already resigned.

Another ministry official was found dead in a suspected suicide, with media reports that he had confessed to being involved in amending the documents.

What does Mr Abe say?

Mr Abe has insisted he did not order any changes to the documents and that it “is clear there is no evidence that I or my wife were involved in the sale of the national land or approval of the school”.

But he did acknowledge on Monday that public trust in his administration had been shaken.

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Shinzo Abe’s approval ratings have been hit by the scandal

“As head of the government, I keenly feel my responsibility in the matter of the people losing their trust in the administration,” he said.

The prime minister’s approval ratings have dropped to below 30% according to polls conducted by Japanese media over the weekend.

Opposition MPs have called for the entire cabinet to resign.

There have been nightly protests around Mr Abe’s office over the past week demanding his resignation.

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AFP news agency journalists said rebels drove looted goods out of the city

There have been reports of looting by Turkish-backed Syrian rebels who seized control of the northern Syrian city of Afrin from a Kurdish militia on Sunday.

A UK-based monitoring group said shops and military and government facilities had been raided.

Turkish state media meanwhile said a booby-trap bomb left by Kurdish fighters had killed 11 people.

Kurdish leaders have vowed that their forces will make Afrin “a permanent nightmare” for Turkey and its allies.

The Turkish military and a number of rebel factions launched an offensive two months ago to drive the People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia out of Afrin city and its surrounding region, which is predominantly Kurdish.

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Kurdish leaders said resistance would “continue until every inch of Afrin is liberated”

The Turkish government says the YPG is an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought for Kurdish autonomy in south-eastern Turkey for three decades, and considers it a terrorist group.

The YPG denies any direct organisational links to the PKK – an assertion backed by the US, which has provided the militia and allied Arab fighters with weapons and air support to help them battle the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).

The Syrian rebels said they met little resistance when they advanced into the centre of Afrin before dawn on Sunday. Many YPG fighters were believed to have withdrawn along with the estimated 250,000 civilians who fled the city last week.

Pictures showed soldiers flying a Turkish flag from a building, and rebels tearing down a statue of the Kurdish hero Kawa Haddad.

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Media captionFootage shows destroyed statues and flags being raised in the centre of Afrin

AFP news agency journalists in Afrin also saw rebels break into shops, restaurants and houses, and leave with food, electronic equipment, blankets and other goods. They were then transported out of the city.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which monitors the conflict in Syria through a network of sources on the ground, said rebels had been “pillaging private property, political and military sites and shops”.

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A prominent rebel leader called for those guilty of looting to be held accountable

Syrian opposition leaders condemned the reports of looting.

“The looting and stealing of private and public property is a crime,” Mohamed Alloush of the rebel group Jaish al-Islam wrote on Twitter. “All those who took part in this decadence need to have their hands slapped hard.”

Abdul Basset Sida, a Kurdish activist who resigned from the opposition National Coalition after the Turkish offensive started, said: “The destruction of the Kawa Haddad statue… and the looting of shops and homes is morally deplorable.”

So will Turkey now move on Manbij, a YPG-held town about 100km (60 miles) to the east? Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warns that it’s next. But that’s probably an attempt to pressurise Washington to co-operate with Ankara in Manbij and evict the YPG.

Turkey announced such a deal prematurely last week; the US said it wasn’t agreed. The removal of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state has delayed talks on the issue.

There will be pressure on Turkey to bring refugees from Afrin back swiftly. Some Kurds fear Turkey’s aim is demographic change – replacing them with Arabs and Turkmen. Ankara denies it, but the Kurdish majority there might not take kindly to a permanent Turkish and Arab presence.

In a separate development, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported that a bomb blast in a four-storey building in Afrin had killed seven civilians and four rebels overnight.

There was no confirmation from the SOHR, but it reported that at least 13 rebels had been killed and 25 wounded by mine explosions since Sunday.

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Some 250,000 civilians are believed to have fled Afrin in recent days

Kurdish authorities said on Sunday that their forces would “switch from direct confrontation to hit-and-run attacks” and that resistance would “continue until every inch of Afrin is liberated”.

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross called for its personnel to be given greater access to Afrin, warning that the Turkish Red Crescent lacked credibility among Kurdish civilians.

The SOHR says at least 289 civilians, including 43 children, have been killed in the battle for Afrin. However, the Turkish military denies targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure.

It says more than 3,000 “terrorists” have been “neutralised” – a term it uses to describe those who have surrendered, been captured or killed. The YPG meanwhile says it has killed hundreds of Syrian rebels and Turkish soldiers.

International experts are due in the UK, to test samples of the nerve agent used in the attempted murder of a spy and his daughter. How do they keep track of the world’s most toxic chemicals?

After collecting samples of the poisons used on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, a team from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will conduct tests, with results expected to take at least a fortnight.

The UK government says the substance used was Novichok – a group of nerve agents it says is “stockpiled” by Russia, which is “culpbable” for the attack. It has dismissed Russia’s claim that the poison came from the UK’s Porton Down facility.

The work of the OPCW is carried out as part of an international control regime that governs what is, or is not, permissible as far as very toxic chemicals are concerned.

Countries agree to never manufacture, stockpile or use chemical weapons – nor to assist others to do so. They are also required to declare what stocks of chemical weapons they have and where they could be produced.

d) To assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention.

Alamy

These declarations are used by OPCW inspectors to audit the destruction of chemical weapons and production facilities – a process that should happen within 10 years.

Most countries meet this deadline, but Russia, which inherited the former Soviet Union stocks, and the US did not. The sheer size of their arsenals, the technical challenge of disarmament and costs have caused delays.

The US has destroyed some 90% of its declared stocks, with 2021-22 earmarked as the target date for completion. Its challenges have included persuading local communities that the work could be safely carried out in their neighbourhoods.

But what about other chemicals and the Novichoks in particular?

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Specialist officers in protective suits investigate the location in Salisbury, Wiltshire, where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found

The Novichoks – those thought to have been used against the Skripals – were never declared to the OPCW, partly because of uncertainty about their chemical structures.

And specific names are crucial, because the CWC allows countries to legally possess a wide range of chemicals if they are identifiable.

Under the convention, countries are allowed stocks of toxic chemicals and their precursors for peaceful purposes including industry, agriculture, research and medicine.

For recognised or potential chemical weapons, and chemicals that may be involved in their manufacture, only limited quantities can be kept.

Signatories are allowed to hold a combined total of one tonne and one facility, usually a laboratory, where these substances can be made.

These stocks can be used to develop protective clothing, gas masks, antidotes and for developing methods to identify chemical weapons.

Auditing of these stocks by the OPCW is down to the milligram level.

For other substances more widely used in industry, but which may be used to make chemical weapons, stocks are closely monitored.

Complete records of the quantities manufactured, sold, used or disposed of must be kept by governments and the information passed to the OPCW every year.

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OPCW headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands

It audits these returns and carries out about 400 inspections of industrial premises globally every year.

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Although the Novichoks fall outside these controls, and no country has declared possession to the OPCW, their existence became known in the 1990s.

It is quite likely that some government laboratories made minute quantities.

Their characteristics would have been stored in databases, so that their identity could be confirmed at a later stage if found as an unknown poison in someone’s blood.

Whether this has happened in the UK’s chemical defence laboratory is not known.

But it is important that the scientists working there were able to identify the Novichok nerve agent used to poison the Skripals as rapidly as they did.

Identifying the agent is vital for the medical treatment the Skripals and Det Sgt Nick Bailey – the police officer injured in the attack – will be receiving.

David Davis is meeting the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels ahead of a crunch meeting of European Union leaders later this week.

The Brexit secretary hopes to finalise details of transition arrangements that would come into force when Britain leaves the trading bloc in March 2019.

The EU wants this period – smoothing the way to the new permanent relations – to last until 31 December 2020.

Both sides hope an agreement can be signed off at the EU summit this week.

Theresa May, who is going to that summit on Thursday, has said the transition period should last “around two years” but Mr Davis said last week he could “live with” a shorter one if it helped secure a deal.

Among other issues the two sides have had to negotiate for the transition period have been what rights expat citizens have, what role the European Court of Justice has in the UK, fishing quotas, whether the UK can negotiate future trade deals with non-EU countries as well as the continuing issues of the Northern Ireland and Gibraltar post-Brexit.

BBC Europe Editor Katya Adler said the issues of the Northern Ireland border and Gibraltar have the potential “to bring the whole Brexit deal down”.

Adrian O’Neill, Ireland’s ambassador to the UK, says it is crucial both sides make progress on the border issue, while Gibraltar’s chief minister Fabian Picardo has expressed confidence that it will be included in the planned Brexit transition deal.

The UK and EU hope that if and when a transition deal is agreed negotiations can focus on what sort of permanent future relationship the UK and EU will have – with the aim of a deal being agreed in the autumn to allow time for EU member states and the UK Parliament to ratify it before Brexit next March.

A giant inflatable duck could be heading home after blowing away from a beach in Western Australia last week.

Daphne the duck, set to play a part in an annual ocean swimming competition, went missing on 11 March off Coogee Beach in Perth.

After a week-long search, and reported sightings hundreds of miles away, Daphne has popped up not far from where she blew away.

Local Toby Gibb found her on a fishing trip the day she disappeared.

“I found it an hour after it went missing,” Mr Gibb told local media.

He did not report finding her immediately because “No-one knew about a missing duck at that point”.

Who is Daphne?

Daphne, an inflatable duck the size of a small caravan was to be used in the 22nd annual Coogee Jetty to Jetty Swim, a local ocean swimming competition.

Cockburn Masters Swimming Club organises the event, and chairman Peter Marr told the BBC that Daphne – “a massive old girl” – was to be a marker for competitors in the water, “but she had other ideas”.

Around 05:00 on the day of the competition, Mr Marr rolled Daphne down to the beach to set her up in the water, but the winds were too strong.

“She flew out of my hands,” said Mr Marr. “I stripped off to chase after her but I couldn’t catch her.”

The club launched an appeal online for help finding the mascot.

The idea for using Daphne as a turning buoy came from bingo.

22 in the game is known as two little ducks, and this is the 22nd swimming competition.

The club also gave out 1,100 small rubber ducks to all attendants.

But during the event, they had to use another turning buoy. “We had to blow up another turning buoy, a boring green cone – barely an adequate replacement,” said Mr Marr.

“The number of kids who expressed their disappointment added to the angst of losing the duck.”

Reports say Voloshyn shot himself at home in Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea.

Ukraine described him as a war hero.

He had flown 33 combat missions in a low-flying Su-25 ground attack jet against Russian-backed separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Recently the 29-year-old had been in charge of the Mykolaiv airport. The southern city near Odessa is called Nikolayev by Russian speakers.

Family members quoted by Ukrainian media said he had been feeling depressed. They were in the flat when he shot himself on Sunday.

An ambulance was called but he died in hospital.

Russian officials not only alleged that Voloshyn’s plane had shot down MH17. According to another Russian theory, it was a Ukrainian military Buk – no longer in service in Russia – that downed the airliner.

Independent experts – besides the Dutch team – rejected the Russian claims, saying the evidence pointed to a Buk fired by pro-Russian rebels or a Russian military unit.

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The Elorza is being issued by the mayor’s office and can be paid for by bank transfer

Amid an acute national shortage of banknotes, the town of Elorza in western Venezuela has started issuing its own paper currency.

Local officials said that the currency would make it easier for residents and visitors to trade during the town’s festivities, which start on Monday.

They said rampant hyperinflation and a scarcity of bolivares, the national currency, had affected trade in Elorza.

The new currency can be bought at the mayor’s office via bank transfer.

‘Money doesn’t flow’

The paper bills feature the face of independence hero José Andrés Elorza and, like the town, are named after him.

“People don’t have bolivares to spend, that’s why we have created bills of two denominations… and we’ve already sold 2bn bolivares worth,” mayor Solfreddy Solórzano, from the governing PSUV party, said.

Local businessman Canuto García explained that the town came up with the idea after it noticed that at local festivities in nearby cities “money did not flow”.

“Now those who want to buy just a sweet or even a whole cow from the barbecue, will be able to do so,” the cattle breeder said.

Venezuela has the highest rate of inflation in the world. In the year to the end of February 2018, prices in Venezuela rose by more than 6,000%, according to an estimate by the opposition-dominated National Assembly.

Venezuelans have been set limits to the cash they pay out per person per day to 10,000 bolivares, which equates to less than five US cents on the black market.

On the black market, the 2bn bolivares worth of Elorzas sold by the local authorities are equivalent to just under $9,000.

Residents and visitors wanting to buy Elorzas can do so via bank transfer or debit card payment at the mayor’s office, circumventing the need to carry wads of bolivares.

Refund offered

The local authorities charge 8% commission but say they will offer a refund for any unspent Elorzas. Traders can take their Elorzas to the mayor’s office at the end of the day and have the equivalent in bolivares transferred into their accounts.

Elorza is not the first town in Venezuela to come up with the idea of printing its own money.

In December, the community of El Panal in Caracas launched paper notes called panales which could be exchanged for the rice which the community grows.

Critics of the government of President Nicolás Maduro blame Venezuela’s rampant hyperinflation on currency controls brought in by the late President Hugo Chávez 15 years ago.

The government says an economic war is to blame as well as the smuggling of the currency to neighbouring Colombia.

World leaders are congratulating Vladimir Putin on his election for a new six-year term as Russian president, but so far no Western leaders have responded to his victory.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country’s partnership with Russia was at its “best level in history”.

Mr Putin got more than 76% of the vote, official results show.

He said he was considering changes to his government, including the post of prime minister.

Former President Dmitry Medvedev has held the post since he changed places in 2012 with Mr Putin, who has ruled the country as either president or prime minister since 1999.

The main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was barred from the race.

In a congratulatory message to Mr Putin, Mr Xi said: “Currently, the China-Russia comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership is at the best level in history, which sets an example for building a new type of international relations.”

The leaders of Kazakhstan, Belarus, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba were among others who also sent their best wishes.

But no Western leaders have so far made any comment. Tensions with the West have deepened in recent weeks after the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain, which the UK government blamed on Russia.

Webcams at polling stations were obstructed by balloons and other obstacles, as this video from the Siberian city of Kemerovo posted by the group demonstrates

But Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Electoral Commission, said there were only half as many reported violations compared to 2012, and that none had been serious.

Sunday’s vote was also the first in Crimea since Russia seized the region from Ukraine. Mr Putin’s victory rally coincided with the anniversary of the annexation.

The annexation was bitterly contested by Kiev and ratcheted up tensions between Russia and the West. Russians living in Ukraine were unable to take part in Sunday’s vote because access to Russian diplomatic missions was blocked by the Kiev government.